Aubrey Plaza’s ‘SNL’ Audition Was Total Proto Aubrey Plaza
Some celebrities take on quirky personas when they appear on late night talk shows as a way of dressing up their personalities and artistry as being weirder, wackier and more unique than they really are. Aubrey Plaza is not one of those celebrities.
The White Lotus star and late-night livewire is almost as popular for her peculiar personality on shows like The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon as she is for her in-character performances. Last night, Plaza appeared on The Tonight Show and told Fallon, a six-year Saturday Night Live veteran, about her own attempt at joining the institution’s illustrious cast ahead of her hosting gig for this Saturday night’s show.
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Plaza, who failed to pass the first round of SNL auditions, revealed that she tried to impress her adjudicators by showcasing two of her original characters – a Puerto Rican reporter who tries to make horrific news stories sexy, and a pill-popping housewife with an insane celebrity gossip show. File this one under “egregious casting missteps by 30 Rockefeller Plaza.”
The characters Plaza describes feel perfectly on-brand for the slightly surreal actress and comedian whose sense of humor has a tendency towards the bizarre – in another recent talk show appearance, Plaza claimed that her former castmate Elizabeth Olsen has hands for feet and that Joy Behar has sex with ghosts. By the standard of Plaza’s post-SNL audition career, an unhinged housewife describing what kind of tail Lindsay Lohan would have if she had a tail is par for the course, if not comparatively tame.
Given Plaza’s prolific television career and considerable comedy chops, she is a natural fit to host Saturday Night Live – we’d love to see Plaza and Sarah Squirm deliver a wave of weirdness onto the in-studio audience. SNL is at its best when the host doesn’t take themselves too seriously and off-kilter comedy is given the center stage, and, if Plaza’s previous SNL ideas are any indication, that’s exactly what we’ll get this Saturday.
Hey, Lorne Michaels – since we’re on the topic of White Lotus stars whom you mistakenly refused to cast on SNL, how about letting Jennifer Coolidge host one?
